


Grace and Sally

by laura47



Category: A Girl and Her Plesiosaur (comic)
Genre: Dinosaurs, Don't Have to Know Canon, Family, Formerly Extinct Sauropsids, Friendship, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:24:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laura47/pseuds/laura47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never had all that much luck fishing off the back of an apex predator, but it was still fun to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace and Sally

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boosette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boosette/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, boosette!
> 
> To everyone else: This canon is a 4 panel comic with no words. It takes about 20 seconds to read: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7paaqIW8P1rsyr85o1_500.jpg [edit: The original author has been found! Tallychyck on DeviantArt made this for a charity book called _Monsters and Dames_ Go give them a visit at: http://tallychyck.deviantart.com/art/Monsters-And-Dames-2010-141108997 ]
> 
> Now you have another Yuletide canon you can read fic for. :-)
> 
>  

"Hello! It's me! Do you remember me? I'm Gracie! I'm Grace Anne Simmons! Will you be my friend? I'm sorry I forgot about you! I promise I won't forget this time!"

\---

Gracie wasn't at all clear on the differences between modern animals, extinct animals, and the ones that bridged the gap between the two. She'd been playing in the sand with her bucket when her new friend swam up to the shore. Her mother had fallen asleep in the sun (much to her later chagrin) and Gracie had a delightful hour playing with her friend before her mother came to fetch her, and her friend disappeared. She tried to tell her mother, but was simply told it was a lovely story, and it was almost time for dinner and her grandparents were waiting back at the house.

It was a year before they met again. She'd spent the fall drawing pictures of a little creature in the water that no one thought much about, but by the winter she'd become distracted after watching a movie about the jungle, and started drawing big trees and monkeys and birds. Now it was summer again, and to visit Nana and Papa by the beach. Gracie's older cousin Josefina was technically watching her, where "watching her" consisted of giggling with her friends from a distance where they wouldn't be overheard, but could still keep enough of an eye on Gracie to make sure she didn't drown. When her little blue friend of the previous summer swam up, Gracie laughed in delight, and it all came back to her. This time, she wouldn't forget.

"Hello! It's me! Do you remember me? I'm Gracie! I'm Grace Anne Simmons! Will you be my friend? I'm sorry I forgot about you! I promise I won't forget this time!" She put out her hand carefully, the way her Uncle Carlos had taught her to try and make friends with his puppy. Instead of sniffing, the little animal licked her, and she giggled. "Is that how you say hello? Hello! Okay! We’re friends now, what’s your name?" 

Her friend didn't respond with any words, she just gently head-butted Gracie's hand.

"Okay, I guess I will give you a name! How about... um... you live in the water, and you're kind of blue, and you have a cute little tongue, so how about... Sally! Do you want to be Sally?" She licked Gracie's hand, which she took as acceptance of the name. "Okay, you're Sally and I'm Gracie and let’s play! What do you like to eat? I like yogurt and cheese sticks and chocolate pudding!" 

Gracie spent two weeks playing with Sally every day while her cousin mostly ignored her. The adults commented on how well she played by herself and what a blessing that must be on her parents. Gracie said she wasn't alone, she had a friend named Sally who lived in the water, which everyone thought was "precious."

Gracie sobbed when it was time to leave Nana and Papa’s, and promised Sally she'd be back as soon as she could, and begged her not to forget. Gracie spent August begging to go back to the beach, and the weekend before school started, her parents surprised her with a quick day trip back. Josefina was gone, so her Papa took her to the water and let her play while he read a book.

Gracie crouched down at the water's edge while Sally nuzzled her hand. "Okay, Sally, you have to be good while I'm gone, okay? I don't know when I will be back. It gets really cold in the winter, so I'm making you a little nest out of this blanket, okay? So if you get too cold, you can go curl up in there, and please be careful, and I'll see you next summer, okay? I love you." 

Gracie was quiet on the way home, trying not to cry, sitting in her booster seat. She was about to start Kindergarten, and she had to be a big girl now. Everyone said so. She had to be strong for Sally, and make sure to remember her all year, and draw and paint lots of pictures to bring back and show Sally next summer.

\----

Gracie was eight when she realized that Sally might be a dinosaur. Her class was learning about ecology and different kinds of animals, and she couldn't find anything that seemed to match Sally. She'd stopped talking to anyone else about her aquatic friend the past summer, after her parents had started looking at her funny and talking about her "imaginary friend" with their serious faces on. She was old enough to know that not everyone got to have someone like Sally in their life, and that they might be jealous of what she had. She also understood that there might be something dangerous about telling other people, though she didn’t know exactly why or what might happen. But Sally was her special secret friend whom she didn’t get to see nearly often enough, and she was hers alone, even if she really wasn’t sure what kind of animal Sally was.

Gracie’s teacher, Ms. Rosenthal, seemed very on edge when she first started talking about dinosaurs. Her voice wasn’t as nice and friendly as it normally was - Gracie always noticed little things like that, just like she noticed how much it unnerved adults when she mentioned it, so she usually didn’t. Ms. Rosenthal spoke very carefully, and didn’t smile, as she explained what extinction was, and that there were animals known as dinosaurs that used to be extinct, but weren’t anymore. That sounded strange to Gracie, that something could all be dead but then not dead, but she waited to ask questions, because people didn’t like getting interrupted when they looked like Ms. Rosenthal did right now. Gracie had heard about dinosaurs and she’d seen dinosaur toys, but she hadn’t understood how special they were. Ms. Rosenthal explained that scientists had brought back dinosaurs, and now people knew a lot more about them, because before they had only been able to make their best guesses. Bobby, who was always saying things that made people unhappy, interrupted without raising his hand to say that his Dad said dinosaurs were a sin and they should all be killed before they ruined everything, and then before Ms. Rosenthal could respond, Minako said that her mom said that dinosaurs opened up lots of good things, and Gracie was very annoyed when everyone was arguing so much that Ms. Rosenthal ended the discussion and made them all be quiet and read. Instead of reading, she thought about how none of her animal books had anything about dinosaurs in them, and how she really needed to find some better books.

\---

That summer, Gracie got to spend a whole month at Nana and Papa’s, after an autumn and a winter of relentless begging. Her parents found a day camp nearby, and she got to be at Nana and Papa’s the rest of the time, with Sally. She was allowed to go walk around the woods by herself as long as she promised to wear her whistle and not go near the water. Gracie knew she should feel bad about going to the water anyway, but she rationalized that they were worried she’d drown, and Sally would never let that happen, so it was actually fine. Every day after dinner she’d go out and climb down the rocks to a little cove with a little cave that no one could see into, and Sally would be waiting for her, sometimes napping, sometimes eating, sometimes swimming around in circles so tight Gracie would laugh and accuse her of chasing her tail. Gracie would hug her, and say “I love you Sally! What do you want to do today!?” Sally didn’t answer in words, but Gracie usually could figure out how she wanted to spend those long summer evenings. Most days Gracie would change into the bathing suit she kept hidden there along with a ratty old towel, and she and Sally would go exploring, or race, or look for pretty rocks and shells. Sometimes they would play hide and go seek, but Sally was much too good at both finding and hiding. Gracie didn’t like losing normally, but she was okay with giving up at finding Sally sometimes, because she was so proud of how clever her friend was. She’d shout, “I give up! Come back!” and Sally would appear almost instantly, and give her a big lick, which always made Gracie giggle.

Gracie would tell Sally about her days at camp, about how much she loved boating and arts and crafts, about funny things her grandparents said, about school, and the things she was learning in her dinosaur books. Talking to Sally was easier than any human, and she was sure Sally understood most of what she saying. Gracie would come up with stories about the places they explored, and the pirates who used to live there and the buried treasure they left behind, or other little girls who used to swim here, or fairies and dragons (who usually turned out to be a misunderstood dinosaur who befriended a red-headed girl.)

Afterwards, they’d go back to the cove, and Gracie would dry off and change and make herself presentable and relax until the sun started to head towards the horizon. She’d tell Sally she loved her, and to be good until she came back. Then she’d climb back up the rocks and come up with stories to tell her grandparents if they asked what she’d been doing, and play cards and listen to Papa’s stories until bed time.

\---

On her tenth birthday, Gracie became Grace, because Gracie was too much of a kid's name. Sally stayed Sally, because while she had some small regret that she hadn't come up with a more clever name when she was four, but there was nothing for it now, Sally was Sally and that was that. Sally kept growing, and that summer Grace could ride on Sally with no problem, to their mutual delight and excitement. They explored farther and farther, now that they weren't limited by Grace's swimming ability. Grace spent the school year on the swim team. Swimming in the school pool wasn’t like swimming with Sally, with the chlorine and the lanes and all the other kids, but it still made her think of Sally, and she couldn't wait to show her what a stronger swimmer she was, even if she would never win another race against her speedy friend.

Over Christmas break, her family took a trip to the Caribbean, the first big trip they'd ever taken. Everyone wanted to talk about what a good swimmer Grace was, but even when snorkeling and looking at really beautiful things, she just missed Sally so much it hurt. She told her parents what she really wanted for Christmas was to spend the whole summer with her grandparents, and to not have to go to summer camp. They compromised on camp every other week, "to give her grandparents a break", even though Grace swore she wasn't a problem at all. Her cousins all thought she was a weirdo, but Grace didn't care, because a whole summer with Sally was the best present in the world. 

When Grace was eleven, and everyone else was doing book reports on the latest popular young adult series, she wrote about a nonfiction book called "Neopaleontology for Beginners", and her teacher told her parents that they should put Grace in a science enrichment program. She had to learn other things, too, like Chemistry and Earth Science, but she didn't mind. Her schoolwork was often a bit too easy and boring so she welcomed the change and no one there questioned why she wanted to learn so much about dinosaurs. She was delighted to figure out that Sally was a plesiosaur, and shocked to discover that plesiosaurs weren't actually dinosaurs! They'd lived in the same era as dinosaurs, but were a different order, both sauropsids, which sent her off on trying to pin down exactly which kind of plesiosaur she was. She read through all the books she could find about the biology of Mesozoic creatures, but ignored all the politics; what did she care about politics? After a few weeks, Grace's enrichment teacher, Mr. Pendergast, noticed her interest and gave her a documentary to watch about Jurassic Park and everything that had happened afterwards. 

Grace had understood in broad strokes what had happened, that there had been cloning and then a lot of arguing, but that documentary changed her perspective on everything. The first dinosaur clones had been intended for a theme park, but everything had gone terribly wrong, people had died, and the park had been destroyed. At first Gracie was sad about all the dinosaurs and people who had died, but as the film progressed, she became angry at how poorly designed and managed everything had been at Jurassic Park. Some animals escaped, and there was another island where the babies had lived. People tried really hard to cover it all up, but, as the narrator said, "the genie was out of the bottle". Once people knew it was possible, once there were Mesozoic creatures running and swimming around the world, there was no stopping it, just arguing about it. China embraced clone technology wholeheartedly, but it was tightly controlled and there was a dangerous black market, raising animals for pets, for trophies, for meat, for experiments. Other countries outlawed it completely, and the United States and European Union couldn't seem to make up their minds. Gracie was angry to think about ancient creatures being clones and then just raised in terrible conditions to be eaten, though it took a few days for those thoughts to make her start thinking about how she felt about other meat. (To her parents' dismay, she'd become mostly vegetarian within a few weeks, and started signing lots of online petitions about the rights of all kinds of animals, both modern and formerly extinct sauropsids.)

Gracie continued reading everything she could find, and eventually concluded several things: that Sally was most likely a Elasmosaurus, that Elasmosaurs were far more intelligent than people gave them credit for, that no one could ever know about her, and that people mostly sucked. She was disgusted with politicians, with lobbyists, with scientists who didn't consider the consequences of their actions, with corporate espionage and secrets that meant no one had any clue how what was actually going on, with churches that didn't understand science but wouldn't shut up about it, with almost everyone involved. There were research programs to study neopaleontology, and a few wildlife preserves, but people were constantly protesting and calling for all the animals to be killed and other things that frustrated Grace to no end. Very little was known about large aquatic sauropsids like Sally; there weren’t any living in captivity, so they were hard to study. No one even knew how many of them had wound up in the wild, or what effect they would have on the ecosystem. Grace accepted that this was a very complicated issue with no easy answers, and that other, modern animals might go extinct, but she could not accept sending other species back to extinction! Even if she did have nightmares about velociraptors killing Sally. Above all else, Grace wanted people to just be reasonable about the situation and stop getting so overemotional... despite her own intense emotions about the issue.

She researched what people did know about Elasmosaur biology, but after a very unpleasant vomiting incident, she gave up on trying to introduce Sally to new foods that "experts" thought she should eat. Given her rapid growth, she certainly seemed to have found food that agreed with her just fine! The one question she couldn't seem to answer was where Sally had come from. Grace had found her when she was quite small -- had she been born in the wild? Where were her parents? Was she a first generation clone, and if so, who had let her go? Sometimes she felt slightly guilty, knowing that scientists would love to study Sally if given the chance, but she tried to channel those feelings into other ways to help. Grace got on the mailing lists of a lot of advocacy groups, but had issues with some aspect of most of them. She spent so much time reading about ethics that her parents and teachers pushed her to join the debate team freshman year, and much to her surprise, Grace found she was very good at it.

Grace had never been the most popular kid in school, not because she wasn't able to, but because she didn't care enough. She knew what she wanted - to be with Sally as much as possible, and when she couldn't, to swim as much as possible, to paint and write stories without having to show them to other people, and to not be bullied. Writing was easy, but people always wanted to see her paintings, though no one ever seemed to notice the little representations of Sally she snuck into almost every painting. Swimming was easy too - having a sport meant her parents worried less about how solitary she tended to be. She eventually wound up co-captain of the junior varsity swim team, and was surprised to find she didn't mind it. She was good at swimming, she was good at organizing, and she had no problem helping out the other kids on the team, which made them like her more. Grace was very good at managing the other kids. Reading other people had always been easy, and it wasn't hard to figure out which kids to avoid, which ones to offer to help with schoolwork, which ones to smile at and which ones she could safely ignore. She had friends, she supposed, or at least people who thought of her as a friend, and that was fine. She didn't want to be alone all of the time, she just liked doing things on her own terms. The debate team was very comfortable. Everyone was smart, and passionate, and liked to think and talk in orderly ways. She could argue for hours without having to consciously think about what anyone thought of her, because default Grace was someone who fit in with debate. She even managed to convince a few other debaters to give up factory farm meat, and, to her immense surprise, almost the whole team came with her to a protest for ethical treatment of dinosaurs (and they even tolerated Grace ranting about how they weren't all dinosaurs, that was a common misconception, they should really call them formerly extinct sauropsids, and really it betrayed how little people understood the issues, etc).

For her twelfth birthday, Grace's grandparents had given her a little kayak to keep at their house, and she'd taken it out every day she could, which made meeting Sally easier. The cove was fairly secluded, but vacationers did wander around the shore. She swore to her parents that she never went out boating alone, but in reality her grandparents were very lenient. In the back of her mind, she thought that really this wouldn't be very safe for anyone who wasn't lucky enough to have a plesiosaur as a best friend, but she certainly never complained.

She took up fishing, having decided that met all her ethical standards and fish was tasty. She never had all that much luck fishing off the back of an apex predator, but it was still fun to try. She started fishing off the docks with her grandfather, and sometimes going out in his canoe. That was the summer that she finally started to realize that perhaps she was using her grandparents a bit. She stayed with them all summer, she ate their food and lived in their house, and acted like she wanted to spend time with them, wanted to spend her whole summer there, but really she spent all her time with Sally or thinking about Sally. Surely they'd noticed, but maybe they thought she was just trying to avoid the tension at home. She tried not to think about that, about how much she hated when her parents fought, but it was so much nicer living somewhere without shouting. If her grandparents were letting her stay to avoid that, well, she owed them even more, didn't she?

After that, she saw Nana and Papa in a whole new light. They were, she realized, real people in their own right, not just her grandparents, her mother's parents, the source of her access to Sally and birthday and Christmas presents. She'd known that, of course, but she hadn't really understood it. She started asking her grandparents about their lives, about their childhoods, how they'd met, what life had been like when they were young, and found it fascinating. They started a little summer book club together, alternating reading books from their youth and current books that Grace liked. Over the school year they kept it up, only one book a month, with a phone call at the end of the end of the month to talk about it. Grace didn't love Sally any less, but she found herself actively excited to see her grandparents as well whenever she got to visit. She wished she could tell them about Sally, and didn't know what she would say if they ever pressed her on what she actually did all those days, but they never did. They knew how to respect privacy, for which she was infinitely grateful.

By the summer after freshman year, she was finally allowed to go camp overnight on the little island she and Sally had discovered, which was the most exciting thing to happen all year. For the first time, she got to see Sally in the moonlight, and do a quick sketch to paint later. She got to watch the sun rise and set with Sally, and sleep on a hammock right near her dearest friend.

When Grace talked to Sally, she was sure she understood. Opinions about the intelligence of sauropsids were changing all the time, but no one thought Elasmosaurs were particularly intelligent. Grace knew otherwise. She learned about how people communicated with chimps, and it was impossible to teach Sally sign language, but they found ways to communicate, with things like tail gestures. In the end, though, they didn't really need things like that. Grace knew Sally understood her, and Grace hoped she understood Sally.

\---

Sophomore year was a pretty good year. Debate and swimming were going great, school was fine, and there was some promising legislation in the works about the treatment of dinosaurs (even though no one would call them sauropsids). A boy named Jason asked Grace out on a date, and she said yes, for the novelty of it. They went to a movie, and made out in the back row, and Grace decided that maybe she didn’t like kissing. After the debate team won Regionals, they had a party in one of the hotel rooms. Grace tried to beg off and go to bed, but let herself be dragged along rather than making a scene. There was a lot of drinking, which she didn’t take part in, and a lot of kissing, which she decided to try again when Lisa Maloney was so insistent (and really not too bad to look at). She decided that she maybe did like kissing after all, and perhaps it was just boys that were the problem. She and Lisa never talked about it again, and Lisa started dating a senior.  Grace told herself she was fine with it, that relationships weren’t worth the trouble, but sometimes, she wasn’t so sure.

The whole family went to Nana and Papa's for Christmas, and Grace went down to visit Sally. Since Sally wasn’t expecting her, she whistled for her the same way she had for years and sat down to wait. After a few minutes, she whistled again.  Then again.  After a few more minutes, she started to worry. Sally was probably just far away because she wasn’t expecting Grace. Surely nothing was wrong.  How could something be wrong? Sally had always taken care of herself with very little actual help from Grace because, really, what could she do? She waited an hour before her cell phone rang and her family demanded her presence. She tried not to worry all night but it was no use. Where was Sally? What happened?

The next morning she snuck away before sunrise to go down to their cove and wait. She whistled every few minutes, watching the sun rise, listening to the water, and trying to stay calm. Everything would be okay. Everything would be okay. It had to be.

After an hour, Sally appeared, and Grace instantly burst into tears. She hadn’t cried like that in years. Sally quickly came over and started licking her hands looking up with concerned eyes.

“I’m sorry girl. I didn’t mean to scare you. I… I just was worried because you didn’t come when I called. But you’re here and everything is okay.” Grace slowly pulled herself together while stroking Sally’s head. “You didn’t know I was coming. It’s not summer. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

She sighed and tried to regain her composure. She’d never really thought about something happening to Sally; she seemed too invincible. Grace realized she had no idea what Sally got up to when she was gone. She didn’t see her for most of the year; for all Grace knew she migrated! She’d probably never know. It wasn’t like Sally could communicate details like that, and she didn’t have access to the kind of tracking equipment she’d need to record something like that. 

Sally gave her a little headbutt, and Grace shook her head. “Sorry girl, I just was thinking about things. Do you want your Christmas present?” Grace had found the largest animal chew toys around. They were still small for Sally, but she hoped she’d enjoy them. “Remember when we used to play catch with dog toys? Here, catch!”

Sally seemed to enjoy her Christmas presents, and that was all Grace needed. 

\---

August 3, 5:30 pm. Grace was picking berries out on the little island that she thought of as her own, and Sally crooned out a noise.  Grace knew this noise.  It meant, “I would certainly appreciate a belly rub anytime now. Yes I know you’re doing something else, but anytime now.” The sun was high and it was a beautiful day. Grace was perfectly happy, because she didn’t know that her grandfather had just suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his garden. Grace had left her cell phone back on shore, and when she got back to it, she found a terse voicemail from her Nana telling her to please come back to the house as soon as possible. She ran, forgetting her berries and her shoes, and only taking a moment to shout at Sally that she had to go and would be back when she could.

By the time she got there, the EMTs were gone, and so was Papa. Grace found her Nana sitting on the front porch, staring off into the distance, not turning to look at Grace’s noisy approach.  As soon as Grace saw her, she stopped running, and she knew. She could feel the lack of her grandfather, see the loss in Nana’s eyes, and she wanted to run away. She wanted to run back to the beach and swim away and pretend it wasn’t true, but she couldn’t. She walked slow up to her grandmother and sat down next to her on the porch swing -- the swing that Papa had built, back when they’d first bought the house, long before Grace was born. She didn’t say anything, and neither did Nana. She took her grandmother’s hand in hers and noticed how wrinkled her skin was -- how suddenly old and fragile she looked. Soon there would be tears.  Soon there would be phone calls to relative, arrangements to be made, coffins, graveyards and casseroles. But for now, they sat in silence and looked down at the water he had loved so much.

\---

Aunt Jane and Uncle Carlos lived the closest, and they were there before the sun was all the way down -- the first sunset without Papa. When they arrived, everything changed. All the emotions came to the surface. There were tears and hollow meaningless words. Grace had to get away before something inside her exploded. She kicked off her sandals and ran down to the beach as quickly as she’d run up before, and with as little concern for falling on rocks. She got down to the water and didn’t stop. She ran into the water until she couldn’t run, and then she swam and swam and tried to push it all out. She tried to swim so hard she couldn’t think and couldn’t feel until it all went away. She didn’t hear Sally coming and didn’t know she was there until Sally was swimming alongside her.  Sally kept pace and stayed with her until she was ready to stop. Grace swam until her arms screamed and her lungs burned and she couldn’t swim another stroke and she sagged. Then Sally was under her, lifting her up out of the water, letting her collapse and keeping her safe. Grace rolled onto her back, looked up at the stars and took deep breaths.  She breathed in and out in time with Sally rising and falling together. After an eternity, she turned, wrapped her arms around Sally’s neck and sobbed. She sobbed for her Papa, for her Nana and for herself. She sobbed because everything and everyone dies, and all the science in the world couldn’t stop that.

An hour later, they were back at the shore. Grace was pulling herself together and putting on her shoes while talking to Sally.

“I have to be strong now. For Nana. Everyone’s going to swarm all over her, and I bet they’ll try to force her to make decisions she doesn’t want to make.  They’ll force her to move into a retirement home and to sell the house. I can’t let them push her before she’s ready. They’re always so pushy. I have to give her somewhere safe. I can do that now. I’m still sad. I’m going to be sad for a long time, because I loved Papa. But I can do this now.”

She knelt down and wrapped her arms around Sally again. “Thank you, Sally, for always being there for me. I love you.” Sally wrapped her head around Grace’s back, hugging her back, and Grace knew she was loved in return.

\---

They got through the funeral, and everything that came after. Grace and Nana finished the last casseroles, and the sympathy cards stopped coming, and while it wasn’t quite a new normal, there was something to settle into. Grace had never really lost anyone or anything she cared about before, and it hurt more than she thought it could. The sun still shone, the water was still wet, floors needed to be swept and mail needed to be opened, but behind it all was such a deep sadness that Grace didn’t know how to deal with. She spent as much time as she could with her grandmother, and tried to make the most of every moment with Sally, knowing the summer was drawing to a close, and that she needed Sally to be able to be there for Nana.

School started again, and Grace had to leave, but now she spent at least a weekend a month with her Nana, and with Sally. Her parents didn’t try to argue with her, which was probably best for all concerned. No one really begrudged her spending so much time with her grandmother, though some people thought it a bit odd. Grace didn't care. She knew her grandmother wouldn't be around forever, and she needed her. Nana always tried to put on a bright face for Grace, but she could see that she was faltering, alone after so many decades with constant companionship. She painted a lot, and gave most of her paintings to Nana - they weren’t for anyone else. She painted the water, and Papa, and Sally. She loved painting, but after she was done, she had the image in her head, and didn’t really need to look at it anymore. Nana appreciated them, though, and she liked making her happy.

One Saturday in January, Grace sat on the shore, playing catch with Sally. When Sally didn’t toss the ball back, Grace stopped and looked at her. Sally looked at her inquisitively. Grace stood up and started pacing.

“Sorry girl, I guess I was lost in thought again. I’m just so worried about Nana, she’s so alone, and I know sometimes after… something like that, it’s hard for people to…” She trailed off, not wanting to say it aloud. “I don’t want her to be alone, and I want her to have something good in her life… I’ve always kept you secret, to keep you safe, but… would you like to meet my grandmother? We can trust her, I know we can.”

Sally rubbed her head against Grace’s shoulder, and Grace wrapped her arms around her.

“Thank you, Sally.” 

\---

All in all, Nana took it far better than Grace had ever hoped. She didn’t scream, she didn’t faint, she didn’t even seem to doubt Grace for a moment. Of course she’d known there was always something that drew Grace to the water, to make her keep coming back. As they walked down to the shore, as Grace prepared for her first human-plesiosaur introduction, Grace asked her grandmother a question.

“Nana, did you ever suspect it might be a plesiosaur?”

“No, darling, I can’t say I ever suspected anything like this!”

\---

Toward the end of the school year, Nana's health started to deteriorate, and the family decided she shouldn't be living alone, that the house should be sold and she should move. Grace was utterly distraught, and no one could understand why, and she couldn’t really explain. She talked about Nana’s need to be independent, about how much of Papa was in that house, how much it meant to everyone, but she couldn’t mention Sally, and they didn’t understand.

Grace had several long talks with her grandmother, and announced to the rest of the family that she would be moving in with her grandmother full time once the school year ended.  She had a driver's license now, and Nana had a car, and there was a regional high school she could attend for her last year.  It was not a good time for the family. Her parents countered by offering to take in Nana themselves, but Grace refused to budge, and not just because her parents seemed on the edge of divorce by that point. Nana didn't need a nurse or anything fancy, she just needed someone to be with her, to help shop, keep an eye on her, and be company, and Grace was well suited to that. No one could understand why she was giving up such a very well ranked high school, giving up the swim team, and debate, and all those electives, but really, Grace didn't care. She did those things to keep from being bored, because she was good at them, because she did like them, but not because she needed them to be happy. She was doing this for herself, for Nana, and for Sally.

Of course part of it was Sally, not wanting to lose access to her, to have to say goodbye, there was no denying that. As she argued with her parents and aunts and uncles, she realized that even if Sally weren’t there, as terrible a thought as that was, she wanted to be with her Nana for however long she could, there in that house that had seen so much love for so long. Grace loved her parents in a more abstract way -- they'd raised her, they'd loved her, she appreciated that, and she liked them as people, but she'd never felt as connected to anyone in her family as she did to her grandparents. She regretted not having spent more time with Papa before he'd passed away, and she wasn't going to do that here.

Nana was willing to go live in the suburbs with Grace's parents if that was what Grace wanted. She'd never ask Grace to move out to live with her, that wasn’t her way, but it was clear to Grace she didn't want to move. After what seemed like the hundredth thrown down fight with her parents, she called Nana and cried. Grace tried to never cry in front of other people, it just wasn't her way. She could cry with Sally, but that was different. That night, Grace cried, because this was Nana, and she could cry with Nana. She finally asked Nana if this was what she wanted, or if Grace was just projecting her own desires, if she was being selfish about wanting to be "near the water" (the euphemism they always used when talking about Sally near anyone else). Nana was quiet for a few moments, and then said that she’d do anything Grace wanted, but she’d never really liked the suburbs, and that was all Grace needed to hear.

In the end, Grace got her way, because she was as endlessly stubborn when something important was on the line. Her parents had always known she was strong willed, in her curious quiet way, but that was when they realized they really had no control over their daughter, and that she was probably going to be just fine. After they agreed to let her move, things were actually very calm for the last month. Everyone knew what was going to happen, that Grace was going to move, and would probably never ask her parents for anything again. Her parents knew they didn’t have to stay together for Grace’s sake anymore, which actually made living together easier, without that pressure. No one was more surprised than them when they didn’t get a divorce, when couple’s counseling actually seemed to work.

The last night before Grace left town, her debate team and swim team friends threw her a really heartfelt surprise going away party, and Grace had to go to the bathroom and cry. They gave her a scrapbook that she treasured, stayed up all night laughing and reminiscing, and Grace had her first ever beer (and also her second and third). Grace thought she’d be leaving everyone behind, but she actually kept in contact with several of her friends, thanks to the wonders of technology. Maybe high school hadn’t been such a complete waste after all.

\---

Grace finished her senior year, and graduated from the regional high school. Of course people wanted her to go to college, with her grades, her activities, all those things that colleges love to see, but Grace would have none of it. After the fight of the previous spring, no one really tried that hard, except Aunt Jane, who kept sending her long emails about wasted potential and how she would regret everything, how everyone had expected so much from her. Grace replied and told her that she’d never promised anyone anything, and their expectations were their own to deal with as they would, and not her problem. She showed Nana the email, and she chuckled, telling Grace that her daughter had always been a bit too worried about other people’s business. It was nice, being able to talk to Nana about literally anything. Nana said she could do whatever she thought best, but she should probably think some about where she wanted to be in twenty years.

Grace thought a lot about it, and that fall she took online classes, trying to feel out some subjects, and in the spring enrolled at the closest community college. She went in for a studio art class and biology lab, and was able to do the rest online. Nana was having more trouble getting around, and Grace didn’t like to leave her for long. Nana still loved to go down to the beach and visit with Sally - she said it made her feel young again, and full of wonder. Grace never for a moment regretted sharing her secret with her Nana, she only regretted she’d never told her Papa. Nana agreed that he would have loved Sally.

\---

Grace lived with Nana until she passed away, peacefully, with Grace by her side. She’d left the house and the lands to Grace, which there was some grumbling about from some of the family, but she’d left some money to everyone else. It was hard to say that she and Grace hadn’t been closest, that Grace hadn’t been there for her in every way she could. Not that Grace really cared what they thought. She’d let them come for the family reunion every summer, and live her life the rest of the year, and that was that.

Eventually she got a bachelor’s degree, and she got into advocacy work, mostly online organizing, some travel, but mostly phone calls, online video calls, things she could do from home. She fought to change the laws about dinosaurs, to have them treated more like other animals, and less like freaks gone wrong. She supported raising money for funding for research into the long term consequences of dinosaurs in the modern world. (She also finally gave up arguing about calling them dinosaurs, because it hurt advocacy if people didn’t know what she was talking about. In her heart of hearts, she always called them formerly extinct sauropsids, and that was enough.)  She went to conferences, and made friends who had the same passions she did, friend who she really connected with, and that made her happy. She enjoyed talking online, and occasionally phone calls, and seeing them a few times a year, and that made her happy. She had a few girlfriends, but always long distance, always occasional. She was never ready to settle down, never ready to give up her independence. She was happy to have what time she had with them, appreciating it for what it was without ever trying to force it to be something else.

Her causes were slow work, but she was patient. She had Sally, and she wanted other creatures to be as happy as Sally, whatever that took. Over the years, she saw some change - stable wildlife preserves, better regulations, a new generation of scientists and policy makers who had never known a world before Jurassic Park. After so many years, it was clear dinosaurs were here to stay, no matter what people said. She spent the rest of her life with Sally, which was all the Happily Ever After she’d ever needed.

\---

Technically, in the end, Grace was a missing person. She’d insisted on living on her own well past when her family wanted, mirroring the fight so many decades earlier about her own grandmother, but she was stubborn as ever. When her knees started hurting too much, when she was afraid she might not be able to make it down to see Sally anymore, when she might really need to move to a home, she decided it was time. She set her will, she gave most of her assets to her foundation, and left goodbye notes to the few people she cared for most. At sunrise, she went down to the docks, carefully, with her cane, and called for Sally. She smiled at her dearest friend.

“We’re not spring chickens either of us, are we, darling? Do you want to go for a ride?” Sally looked up and wagged her tongue and lowered her neck to let Grace climb on. Grace climbed on Sally, and kissed her gently. Sally licked her back, and Grace smiled, and looked up at the sun, and felt the breeze in her hair, and felt young again.

“Let’s go, girl!”

They rode off into the morning sun, and that was the last anyone ever heard from Grace and Sally.


End file.
